1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to software component design and development, and specifically to a software component framework that enables programmatic influence of software component behavior.
2. Description of Related Art
Conventional approaches to component based software development dictate that a software application is created through development, integration, and installation of one or more underlying software components. Each software component, once installed, provides the other software components with the ability to access its functional capability through a well-specified interface, known as an Application Platform Interface (API). The software component receives requests, known as function calls, through this API, and in response provides access to its internal software component operations. The software component responds to function calls according to the programmatic functional behavior associated with the specific function call or calls defined within and supported by its API.
However, such conventional approaches do not provide much programmatic flexibility regarding use of the software components once the components are installed into the application system, as the components typically provide only a single service access API for reuse by other software applications and also conform only to applicable platform or middleware interfaces for compatible runtime operation. Therefore, once the software components are installed or integrated into the system runtime platform, the behavior of the component API cannot be modified or constrained in any manner.
Therefore, what is needed is a system and method that is capable of enabling modification of software component behavior at a component's API even after installation of the component.